Models of My Life (MIT Press): Herbert A. Simon: 9780262691857: Amazon.com: Books

The late Herbert Simon was a veritable renaissance man. His autobiography, "Models of My Life," discusses the single thread that underlined all of his intellectual conquests in artificial intelligence, sociology, cognitive science, psychology and economics. This one thread, animated by philosophical positivism and ripe scientific thirst, was his deep obsession with modeling and researching decision-theoretic behavior. It's interesting to note that even though decision theory (how intelligent agents percieve and act upon choices amid various modalities) serves as the impetus for Simons work, he uses "Models" instead of "Model" in the book's title. For you see, beautifully fitting of his memoir, this book delves into how Simon's one passion was his "heuristic" in choosing which of many paths he could have taken througout his life. The upshot: Simon's own life emulated the heuristic search (in AI) that he helped invent!